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I write about what I did that was successful. It is my way of giving back to the CPA profession that has been great for me. I grew, as did my firm, my staff, my clients and everyone associated with my partners and me. I take great pride in the growth I burgeon. Some of what I did might seem nutsy, but I had my sights set on building a business and that required leveraging my partners and myself. And that took an investment that sometimes seemed unconventional. Here are three stories of some things I did:
Story 1: I always felt that the best way of training someone was for them to correct their own errors, no matter what! I figured that if they did, they would never make that type of error again, and they would also try to reduce future errors to avoid any inconveniences caused by having to fix them.
One time when I had my NYC practice, it was tax season and I called a staff person around 3 p.m. I told him he had to come to the office that night to fix an error on a tax return he prepared. I told him I wanted to get it out that night, it was going to be delivered by a taxi that night, and he had to fix it before 8 p.m. He lived in Queens and went to a client on Long Island. That was like a “vacation day” since he could easily drive to the client and also be home for an early dinner, with no overtime that night. He was a little put out, but he knew he had to come back. He called me a few minutes afterward and asked if he could drive to the office rather than take the subway, would we pay the parking, and I said we would. Also, we paid overtime, so he would get paid for the time fixing the return, but not for the travel time. When he got into the office, I showed him the tax return where he had to fix the zip code which he had wrong. That was the only error and, if looks could kill, I would have been dead at that very moment. He said nothing, fixed it, and left.
I told this story about a dozen years ago at a CPE program and that staff person was sitting in the front row. He called out that it was him and remembered how angry he was at me. He also said that “because of that, I never made a mistake on a name or address ever again.” He also now had his own very successful practice. I didn’t remember who it was, but he reminded me. Question: If the reviewer fixed the zip code, how many future similar errors do you think he would have made?
Story 2: The first book I wrote was titled “Successful Tax Planning.” It was for businesspeople and was very successful. I decided I wanted to publish a professional edition to be sold to accountants and hired a law school student to add citations and references. He seemed like a go-getter, having previously worked part-time on a political campaign. I wanted to set a serious tone with him and also show him this was thoughtful research work, even though we were CPAs and not attorneys. At that time the Tax Code added Section 465. I held up a paperback copy of the code, opened it to Section 465 and pointed to the word “interest.” I told him I needed a definition of that word and that we would meet in three days to discuss what he came up with. He looked at me like I was crazy, but when we met, he told me he did not have a clue.
My purpose was to show him that nothing in taxes and tax planning was simple or obvious and to get him to understand that I needed him to be very thorough, disciplined and exact, that maybe he didn’t know everything and perhaps I would be able to teach him something.
This project was never completed, getting pushed aside by more urgent or important projects and possibly by my losing interest in becoming a “book publisher.” However, he migrated into tax preparation and planning and some review work. We offered him a permanent job when he graduated law school and he stayed a few years, leaving for a “better opportunity” and ending up in his own tax practice. He built a substantial practice with one of his sons, also an attorney, who is now running it while he is pleasantly clipping coupons on a Florida beach.
My first “exercise” was my investment to get him on board with “my way of doing things.” It worked, and he did great work for us for the time he was with us.
Story 3: Sometimes when you meet a job applicant, there is a spark that shines through, and you just know this is the right person for you. That happened with a young woman we were interviewing. We hired her and sometime during the first week she was working on a humongous aged accounts receivable schedule. She completed it very well, but there was an error of, if I remember correctly, 11 cents in its being balanced perfectly. This was in the early days of computerized spreadsheets. I told her I needed it balanced exactly. She spent a couple of days on it and eventually got it to balance. I explained to her that the 11 cents wasn’t a concern or material. In fact it was completely immaterial, but I wanted her to learn that whatever she worked on had to balance. All she was doing was taking some numbers from one place and reproducing them in another place and there was no reason for them not to match.
That was my investment to teach her to be careful, work deliberately and that speed was not more important than error-free work. She worked for us for 10 years until she left for a job in private accounting close to her home and her three children. She was single when she started working for us.
There are many more stories, but I particularly like these as I am still in touch with these three people. Each story was costly at the time, but that became an investment that paid great dividends. I recommend taking the long view with your practice and to not miss any opportunity to train a staff person properly. My partners and I practiced what we preached, and we had a very successful practice. These ideas are being continued by us through Withum.
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